Standard Group employee sought over wife’s death

February 3, 2012 8:12 am

NAIROBI, Kenya, Feb 3 – Police in Nairobi are looking for a Standard Group employee who allegedly murdered his wife on Thursday night and later sent a text message to his father-in law asking him to collect the body.

The incident in the city’s Umoja Inner Core estate rekindles memories of the May 2011 incident when former Nation newspapers reporter Moses Dola Otieno was accused of killing his wife Wambui Kabiru, a former NTV reporter.

Interestingly both incidents occurred in Umoja estate. Both men contacted their in-laws after the deaths.

In Thursday night’s incident, police said the man first strangled the woman using a necktie and later stabbed her several times in the head before locking the body in their bedroom. The deceased woman worked as a hairdresser.

“After the murder, the man locked the body in the bedroom and sent a text to his father in-law to collect the body,” Nairobi Provincial Police chief Antony Kibuchi said.

Police were called to the scene by the dead woman’s relatives.

There are no immediate reports of the couple’s history or if they had marital problems prior to the killing.

Police in Buru Buru have appealed to anyone with information on the man’s whereabouts to volunteer to help them arrest him.

In May last year, Otieno who had been a crime reporter at the defunct Daily Metro fled for several days after his wife Ms Kabiru was found dead following a domestic row.

Friends and relatives of the couple said they had been wrangling for a while.

Otieno, now remanded at the Kamiti Maximum Prison later surrendered to the police in Naivasha and was charged with murder.

He has been urging the court to reduce the charge to manslaughter after claiming that the wife died in a fight.

BERNARD MOMANYI is the News Editor at Capital FM. He commands over a decade of experience in news gathering having worked in both print and electronic media. He holds a BSc degree in Information Sciences from Moi University and is now pursuing a Masters Degree at the University of Nairobi.